The McClane Apocalypse Book Three (46 page)

"Miss Hannah?" Huntley asks as he tugs at
her dress.

"Yes, Huntley? Did you have fun seeing the
baby goats?" she asks because he and Justin have just come from
there. She is with Em, Ari and Jacob on the swings. Jacob squeals
happily as she pushes him gently in the baby swing.

"Uh, sure," he answers.

"Why's your face red on the side?" Em asks
Huntley presumably.

"Uh, I fell," Huntley says strangely. "I
just tripped and fell."

"Where's Justin?" Hannah asks when she does
not hear her nephew's normal rambunctious activity.

"He went to the house to get a snack,"
Huntley explains. "Miss Hannah?"

"Oh, yes, Huntley?"

"I need to…," he says but doesn't
finish.

Hannah wishes she could see the boy's face.
"Yes?"

"Kelly wants to see you in the hog
barn."

"He does?" Hannah asks with surprise. Why
would he want her to walk all the way out there? It is the furthest
barn from the house, near the apple orchard, and the terrain is
difficult for her.

"Uh, yeah. He said to hurry," Huntley says
quickly.

"Oh, well then I'd better go. Em, can you
take Jacob and Ari to Sue for me, honey?" she asks of the girl.

"Sure, Hannah. Come on, Huntley. We can play
tag in the front yard after I give Jacob to Sue," Em says
gleefully.

The lightness in Em's voice fills Hannah's
heart with joy. She feels that maybe, just maybe Em will eventually
find happiness again.

Hannah takes her cane and starts across the
yard and then enters the paddock. When she is almost to the cattle
barn, Hannah can hear Sue calling to the kids. They will just have
to explain to her sister where she's going.

She trips three times but manages not to
fall before she gets to the entrance of the hog barn. Poking her
stick around in front of her, Hannah finds the man door and goes
through it. She hates this barn. It smells like the pigs, it's
always unfamiliar to her, and there's equipment in the center aisle
that she never fails to bang her knees and thighs on.

"Kelly?" she calls softly. "Kelly, I'm
here."

Suddenly, her cane is flung roughly away
from her as if someone has kicked it. It's enough to startle her,
and she lets out a yelp.

"Kelly?" she says with growing trepidation.
Kelly would never throw or kick her cane from her.

"No, not Kelly. That's a faggoty name, you
ask me," says a man's voice from behind her.

Hannah swallows hard. This is bad. This is
really, really bad. This is the kind of stupid mistake that Reagan
would yell at her for. The hairs on the back of her neck stand on
end.

"Who's there?" she asks and hates how
cowardly she sounds.

"Don't be scared. It's just me. It's Willy.
Remember?"

Hannah has no idea who this man is. He's
obviously one of those men from the camp, but she's not sure why
she should know him.

He continues, "You brought me peaches.
Sweet, sweet peaches. I bet you're a sweet peach, too, aren't
you?"

"You're welcome for the peaches, but I need
to get back to my family now," Hannah says and turns to leave but
runs into the barn wall with her outstretched hands. Where is
Kelly?

She didn't give this man peaches or anyone
in their group peaches for that matter. She isn't exactly sure what
he is talking about. She can tell by his accent that this is the
Mexican man that Kelly's told her to stay away from when they get
their water because he's strange.

"You don't need to run off, peach," Willy
tells her in a creepy lilt.

Hannah has a dreadful feeling come over her.
Kelly isn't here. He doesn't know she's out here, either. She's on
her own.

"No, I do. They'll wonder where I am,"
Hannah says and slides her hand along the wall to find her way back
out of the barn. "It was nice talking with you, but I should go.
Good-bye."

"I said you don't need to run off!" he
shouts with anger.

His tone scares Hannah. She continues to
slide her hand along the rough, wooden wall.

"No, no. I really need to go," she tries to
convince him.

"Get back here, bitch!" he retorts with evil
venom and intent.

Willy grabs her from behind right as she is
about to go back through the door she's found again. He hefts her
off of the ground with one arm around her waist and carries her as
she thrashes to be free. She can tell that he is not particularly
tall, because her feet drag the ground from time to time. But he is
much stronger than her.

"Stop!" she cries out feebly. "Please, stop
this, sir! My family will be looking for me!"

"Shut your mouth," he warns with menace, not
sounding at all like he had earlier.

They are moving toward the back of the barn
where Hannah is not sure of her surroundings. Her leg bangs
painfully into a piece of metal, probably machinery as she cries
out and jerks free. Her captor drops her, and she tries to crawl
away but runs her head into a wall or something before Willy is
back on her again. He is carrying her farther into the barn. And he
is laughing cruelly at her.

He charges forward, ignoring her pain and
Hannah is flung roughly to the ground where she slides a few feet
on her hands and knees. Her hands scrape painfully against the
rough floor, and she bangs her head into something again, perhaps
another wall and more forcefully this time. A slow, wet trickle
begins running down her forehead, and Hannah knows that she is
bleeding from hitting so hard. She touches her trembling fingertips
to her head momentarily and pulls them away with her own wet blood
coating them. She feels dizzy enough to vomit.

"Oh, peach. Oh, I didn't mean to do
that."

Why is he suggesting that he didn't mean to
do that? Of course he had. He'd done it on purpose. This man is
irrational and crazy, and she needs to get away from him. His
pleasant but more frightening voice is back.

"Listen to me, peach. Don't fight with me
and that won't happen, ok?" Willy says in a bizarre placating tone.
"You're such a peach, such a sweet thing."

Willy grasps Hannah's calf and forcefully
yanks her backward toward him on her belly, and Hannah tries to
grasp onto something, anything to prevent having to be close to
him. Her fingernails scrape on the barn floor and some break
painfully. His grip is so hard on her calf that Hannah has no doubt
that she'll be bruised terribly. She also knows that if she doesn't
get away from him, that a bruise on her leg will be the least of
her worries, or injuries. She is vaguely aware that she is softly
repeating the mantra "no, no, no" as if that will help her
situation. How could she have been so foolish?

"See, I'm just supposed to get you so we can
use the women to get what we want from the men. You were supposed
to be our hostages. Then when your men give up their guns, yeah,
we're going to kill them. But we ain't gonna kill any of you women.
No way," Willy explains.

The disturbing man has an even stranger,
creepier voice. He is certifiable. No man acts like this. Hannah
reaches out and slices open the length of her palm on some jagged,
sharp thing, which is probably metal sticking out of a grain bin or
piece of farm machinery. She cries out against the pain in her
palm. The man either doesn't notice or care.

"We're going to run this place. I'll be a
king and you'll be my peach. Right, peach? We'll run this place
right, the way it should be."

"Let me go," she pleads as Willy drags her
the rest of the way to him and flips her onto her back causing
Hannah to crack her head on the hard floor. She immediately starts
striking out with her hands, and Willy lands a solid slap across
her cheek which stuns her. He presses himself down onto her so that
she cannot get away.

"No, peach. That was all your fault, ok? Ok,
lovey? I told you not to do that. See? We're friends again. Right,
peach?" Willy asks in all his insane glory.

His breath is foul. Hannah nods shakily as
tears run down beside her face and disappear into her hairline. Her
head is screaming with a severe migraine already. She's hoping that
the man will stop hurting her if she doesn't keep fighting. He
doesn't.

Willy rips the top of Hannah's dress as he
starts talking to himself in an unusual gibberish that doesn't make
any sense. Then he goes back to actually speaking to her as he
roughly holds her down by her shoulder.

"We have us some time before they get back
with that little senorita and kill off those boys in the woods.
Little senorita Sam. She was a fighter, too, till Bobby got to her.
He's young, but he's a good trainer. He's good at training dogs.
You can be my dog, my little puppy."

"Please don't hurt Kelly. Please don't hurt
my family," Hannah begs for her lover's life. Willy slaps her
again, and Hannah figures it is probably best not to speak anymore
because this man cannot be reasoned with.

"See? You don't learn, peach. But you will.
I'm gonna train you like Bobby trained the girl. I tried to warn
you not to act like that. You're going to be my girl, my good girl.
Everyone else got a girl but not me. I need a new girl, too. You'll
be my girl," Willy tells her.

He places his thick hand on her thigh over
her dress.

"I can't be your anything. I'm with Kelly.
We're together. I love him," Hannah tries a different tactic, only
to receive more brutal treatment. His voice lowers in register as
if he's become another person again.

"Shut your mouth! You'll love
me
! My
girlfriends never love me. They never make it, either. They get
bad. They go bad, just like my whore wife did. Then I have to
discipline them, and they usually die. I don't know why they're so
weak."

He starts back up with the incoherent
babbling which is infinitely more frightening than the horrible
words he says that she can understand. Hannah resorts to praying
for her family instead of trying to reason with this
criminally-minded, crazy man. They should've never let any of these
people onto their farm. Why would her Great-uncle Peter even hang
out with people like this? Hannah's not sure she wants to know.

Hannah is frightened out of her mind. This
man is probably going to kill her. She will likely not make it to
the negotiation phase of their plan. He's irrational and the things
he says are so senseless that she's beginning to wonder at the kind
of man he was before the apocalypse. Could he have been a serial
killer? A rapist? Had he killed his wife?

He's still rambling above her and his hands
move to her breasts, so harshly handling them that Hannah starts
crying in earnest. Willy shoves her legs apart. He grinds himself
against her between her legs.

"You motherfucker!" comes a deep, guttural
voice behind Willy.

A splatter of something liquid hits her bare
chest and neck as a primal grunt follows from the new assailant.
Then Willy's body is yanked off of hers in one solid swoop.

"You think you can touch her? Fuck you, you
creepy motherfucker!"

There are two punching type sounds and then
gurgling sounds coming from Willy and then no sounds.

Hannah can hear him being dragged away from
the scraping, shuffling sounds that come from the outer hall area.
She pushes to a sitting position and scoots back on her bottom
until she reaches the wall. Her hands reach behind her as she
braces for another attack.

"Hannah," Kelly's voice comes through the
dark to reach her.

Instinctively her hands extend outward,
searching safety, searching Kelly. His deep voice has returned to
the normal softness that Hannah has come to love. The voice she'd
just heard had not sounded at all like her Kelly.

"Hannah, baby."

He pulls her up into his arms, and she
clings limply to him crying and sobbing.

"Kelly!" she says on a gasp of relief.
"Where is he?" she asks in fright.

"Baby, hold still for a sec," he orders to
which she complies. "He's gone. You're safe now."

"What are you doing?" she asks in a panic as
he moves away from her. Her hands, her legs, everything on her is
shaking terribly.

"Getting a rag. You have blood on your face
and neck," he explains and returns a second later.

He wipes roughly at her face and then neck
and backs away from her again.

"Don't leave me!" she cries out.

"I'm not, Hannah. Come here," he says and
pulls her to her feet.

Her legs can barely support her, they shake
so badly. Her head is blaring with pain, and she feels like she's
going to throw up from it. When she reaches out, his chest is
bare.

"Put this on. Here, let me help you,
baby."

Kelly pulls his shirt down over Hannah's
head and helps her get her arms through the arm holes.

"I could see…," he says and stops.

She knows that her breasts and bra are
showing where Willy had ripped her dress and that Kelly doesn't
want to embarrass her further. Once he gets the shirt on, he
fiercely hugs her to him.

"God, Hannah. When I couldn't find you I
went crazy. Are you alright? I'm so sorry, baby."

"Where's… where's that man?" she asks with
true terror.

"He's dead, baby. I killed him. You're safe
now. He can't hurt you. I'm sorry it took me so long to find you.
I'm sorry. This is all my fault. You're safe again, Hannah," he
tells her and squeezes her to his chest.

Hannah nods and wraps her arms around him as
Kelly holds her upright. Her voice quakes and threatens to crack
when she speaks again.

"Kelly, they planned this. They are trying
to kidnap us women or ransom us or something and then kill you men.
They must have had Huntley tell me to come to the barn because he
said you were out here and needed me," Hannah says in a rush.